I shall not get involved at this stage in the debate as to what form of executive is more desirable overall for the Confederation, but I have some technical comments on the form of your bill.
Firstly, no section actually provides that there shall be a Chancellor. It sets out what the duties of the Chancellor are, but does not state that one should exist. I know that you took the structure from my original Burgermeister of Neufreistadt model bill, but you seem to have replaced "There shall be a Burgermeister of Neufreistadt" with
[quote:wlngynob]1. The Chancellor will serve as the executive of Neufreistadt-CDS, working to coordinate and plan community projects.[/quote:wlngynob]
Doing that wrecks the structure of the original bill, because, in my original model, the first section provided for the Burgermeister (or Chancellor in your version), and the second section provided for the powers. If you want the Chancellor to have the power to "co-ordinate and plan community projects", then that should be in the list of powers in section 2.
The part that states "The Chancellor will serve as the executive of Neufriestadt-CDS" is also very problematic, as it is unclear what serving as an executive entails other than is already given by the powers set out in the bill. Does "will serve as the executive of Neufreistadt-CDS" mean that the Chancellor will have any more powers than set out in section 2? If so, you would do better to spell them out more precisely, as one can only imagine the serious problems that could be created if there was a dispute as to what, if any, powers that section granted a Chancellor. If you do not mean that to grant the Chancellor any specific extra powers, then you would do better just to remove the reference to "act as executive" entirely, and leave "executive" for the preamble and titles, leaving the definition of the powers to cover what exactly is meant by executive.
I suggest, therefore, the following alternative model, that will hopefully acheive what you want it to achieve, but with greater clarity:
"[Preamble]
1. There shall be a Chancellor of [see later note].
2. The Chancellor of [see later note] shall have the power:
(a) co-ordinate and plan community projects;
(b) to determine the use to which any and all land... etc."
Although, as an aside, there is also a certain ambiguity in what constitutes a "community project". What did you intend this to cover? That seems to me to give the Chancellor indeed - did you intend the Chancellor to have the power to take over the planning and co-ordination of any project in the communtiy, for instance? That would be what that section could potentially give the Chancellor the power to do. It is unclear to me what you intended to fall within the scope of "community projects"; if you can give me an explanation of what you had intended, I can suggest a better form of words that should create fewer problems.
Secondly, I am not sure why you are using the bizarre hybrid "Neufreistadt-CDS", or whether, on the occasions that you use just "Neufreistadt", you do so deliberately or because you missed it when you changed the references from the original Burgermiester model bill. If it is deliberate, it is not clear why you choose to do it this way. But, in any event, what is "Neufreistadt-CDS"? As things stand, unless and until the [b:wlngynob]Judiciary Bill[/b:wlngynob] is passed, which changes our name, we are still "Neufreistadt" (because that is what the title of the constitution says), and the "Confederation of Democratic Simulators" is the approved name for when we decide to expand and/or change our structure. When the Confederation of Democratic Simulators name is adopted, there will be a clear distinction between, on the one hand, the name of the Confederation, as the overall organisation, and, on the other, the name Neufreistadt, as the specific Bavarian-themed island sim. What does "Neufreistadt-CDS" mean? To put it another way, what does the "Neufreistadt" part add to "Neufreistadt-CDS", since the latter is a superset of the former? Unless you have a special reason for the hybrid name that is not clear from the face of the bill, I suggest changing all the references to "Neufreistadt-CDS" to "The Confederation of Democratic Simulators" (and the name should be in full - initialisms have no place in legislation, as there could conceivably be ambiguity as to whether "CDS" really does stand for "the Confederation of Democratic Simulators", and, in any event, such informal language is not appropriate in legal text).
Thirdly, this section is problematically ambiguous:
[quote:wlngynob]
3. The Chancellor must provide for regular and active citizen
participation and public review of any decision concerning land use orthe aesthetic or functional environment.[/quote:wlngynob]
What does "active citizen participation and public review" mean? What does the Chancellor have to do to satisfy those tests? When does citizen participation become "active" rather than "passive"? What makes a review public? For that matter, what makes something a review? Does the Chancellor have to appoint an independent reviewer, and be bound by the review process, or does that requirement merely mean that he or she has to be open to receiving representations in writing on the matter? You would do better to spell out precice methods here, or else leave democratic accountability entirely to the selection process and requirement to report to the Representative Assembly.
Forthly, the following section:
[quote:wlngynob]6. The Chancellor will have the right to veto any act of the
Representative Assembly except a bill removing the Chancellor from
office. The Representative Assembly may override a veto with a two
thirds (rounded to lower integer) vote[/quote:wlngynob]
could be worded better. "Will" should be "shall", and "right" should be "power" (see [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_N._Hohfeld:wlngynob]here[/url:wlngynob] for an explanation). You should also make clear [i:wlngynob]which[/i:wlngynob] vetos that the Representative Assembly may over-ride by virtue of that section (I presume that you intended it to mean only Chancellor-vetos), so it should say "override [i:wlngynob]such a[/i:wlngynob] veto...". Finally, "(rounded to lower integer)" is not really appropriate for a legal text: "or the nearest whole number" would be better and clearer.
I thus suggest the following text instead:
"6. The Chancellor shall have the power to veto any act of the
Representative Assembly, except any bill to remove the Chancellor from office. The Representative Assembly may override a veto with a vote by at least a tw0-thirds majority, rounded to the nearest whole number".
Fifthly, in section 8, "each month" is unclear, as you do not provide for when the months shall be taken to start and end. Perhaps it would be better measured by number of Representative Assembly meetings (which, in the constitution, are bi-weekly), so that the Chancellor shall attend every alternate meeting, starting with the second meeting of any term. So, the suggested revised section 8 would start, "The Chancellor shall attend alternate meetings of the Reperesntative Assembly (beginning with the second meeting of any Representative Assembly term), and shall there answer fully and truthfully...".
Sixthly, section 9 is problematic: you seem to propose this whole bill as a constitutional amendment, yet do not specify where in the text of the constitution all this should be inserted. Section 9 (or rather, a section doing what you want section 9 to do) seems to belong in an entirely different section than the rest of the text, namely Article II - the Artisanal (not "Artesan's") Collective. Section 9 as it currently stands will make the constituion a mess, since, in order to understand the powers of the Chancellor as you propose it, it will be necessary to understand all the powers of the Guild that had already existed by precedent. In other words, the Chancellor's powers would be contained not only in Section 2, but also, because of Section 9, in a vast array of precedents that would now be expressly incorporated into the Constitution. This would make the constitution very unclear and difficult to understand.You would be far better simply re-stating the powers of the Artesanal Collective by redrafting part of Article II to provide for certain enumerated powers, and that the Artesanal Collective shall have no more than those powers. It is bad drafting simply to state that an undefined set of powers "shall be transferred" to a new body: it is far better just to state what powers that the new body will now have, and what powers that the body that used to have some of those powers will now have, so that anybody reading our constitution does not have to delve deep into our constitutional history in order to make sense of it.
Finally, clauses of automatic expiry are incompatible with a bill that seeks to establish something that is inherently l0ng-lasting. Automatic expiry clauses are used in real-world legislation for things such as emergancy powers in times of war, and not for something that establishes an ongoing bureaurocracy that must be dismantled carefully rather than suddenly evaporating in case there is a disagreement in three months' time. If the amendment was not re-approved at the expiry of the term, under your proposal, what would happen, for example, about any exercises of the power "to determine the use to which any and all land in Neufriestadt shall be put"? Would such a determination continue to be binding? It is hard to see how it could be if the whole constitutional basis for it suddenly dissappeared. Would buildings whose construction the Chancellor had authorised have to be demolished? What of any community proejcts that were ongoing at the time of evaporation; what would become of them? What about money held by the Office of Chancellor; who would have ownership of that when the office evaporated? What about money already [i:wlngynob]spent[/i:wlngynob] by the Office of Chancellor? Could whoever provided the money re-claim it on the basis that there is no longer authority for it ever to have been spent? Automatic expiry would inevitably create serious instability in the government, which could cause very great problems indeed for the citizens, and would likely make us a laughing stock.
